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Tuesday, 22 January 2013

In an ultra bubble

The last few days I have been in an
ultra bubble. I've been reading my book (”Running through the wall:
Personal encounters with the Ultramarathon”), a collection of short
race-day stories by both amateur and elite ultrarunners, and I've
been so inspired that I've been dreaming ultra dreams. Last
Saturday's run on the snowmobile tracks only added fuel to the fire:
it may not have been long, but running trails always makes me
daydream about long runs in the mountains.

Lapland ultra is not a trail ultra.
Trail poses many challenges that a road ultra doesn't (hills, roots
and stones, wildlife – yeah, I've seen those angry lemmings in the
Swedish mountains-, lack of easy access to civilisation to name but a
few). For my first longer ultra I want to keep it as simple as a 100K
race can be, but don't think for a moment that that's where my heart
lies. If (and that's a big if) I complete the race, the most
important thing that I will have gained will be the
confidence to run ultras in tougher terrain. Lapland Ultra is this
year's biggest goal, but at the same time it is a stepping stone
towards other future goals.

This is where my dad calls me on the phone clutching
his heart to ask me if I've gone mad. Madder. So let me
explain.

As much as I'm looking forward to the
experience of running Lapland Ultra (staying up all night, putting kilometre after kilometre behind me, maybe seeing some reindeer cross
the road, fighting the urge to quit the race because of the
irritating thick cloud of mosquitoes trying to find its way to my
flesh), what I really want to do is to run trails. They don't
have to be 100K long (this is where my dad hopefully breathes a sigh of relief). I'll never forget the solo run on Kungsleden I did a couple of years ago.

It was a magnificent, almost
religious experience, one of the most powerful ones of my life, and I
didn't even run that far! Imagine running further. Seeing more of the
untamed beauty of Europe's last wilderness. Hearing nothing but your
own footsteps and the distant, eerie cries of the Golden Plover
echoing in the mist. Being in a strange limbo, where time ceases to
exist and the horizon extends endlessly in each direction, broken
only by weather and mountains. Nothing beats that. Nothing.